regretted it for all that. What he wanted was to beat Ripton, and
Barry's absence would weaken the team. However, it was good in its way,
and cleared the atmosphere for the time. The League would hardly do
anything with regard to the carrying out of their threat while Barry
was on the sick-list.
Next day, having given him time to get over the bitterness of defeat
in accordance with Clowes' thoughtful suggestion, Trevor called on
Milton, and asked him what his opinion was on the subject of the
inclusion of Rand-Brown in the first fifteen in place of Barry.
"He's the next best man," he added, in defence of the proposal.
"I suppose so," said Milton. "He'd better play, I suppose. There's no
one else."
"Clowes thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to shove Strachan on the
wing, and put somebody else back."
"Who is there to put?"
"Jervis?"
"Not good enough. No, it's better to be weakish on the wing than at
back. Besides, Rand-Brown may do all right. He played well against
you."
"Yes," said Trevor. "Study looks a bit better now," he added, as he was
going, having looked round the room. "Still a bit bare, though."
Milton sighed. "It will never be what it was."
"Forty-three theatrical photographs want some replacing, of course,"
said Trevor. "But it isn't bad, considering."
"How's yours?"
"Oh, mine's all right, except for the absence of photographs."
"I say, Trevor."
"Yes?" said Trevor, stopping at the door. Milton's voice had taken on
the tone of one who is about to disclose dreadful secrets.
"Would you like to know what I think?"
"What?"
"Why, I'm pretty nearly sure who it was that ragged my study?"
"By Jove! What have you done to him?"
"Nothing as yet. I'm not quite sure of my man."
"Who is the man?"
"Rand-Brown."
"By Jove! Clowes once said he thought Rand-Brown must be the President
of the League. But then, I don't see how you can account for _my_
study being wrecked. He was out on the field when it was done."
"Why, the League, of course. You don't suppose he's the only man in it?
There must be a lot of them."
"But what makes you think it was Rand-Brown?"
Milton told him the story of Shoeblossom, as Barry had told it to him.
The only difference was that Trevor listened without any of the
scepticism which Milton had displayed on hearing it. He was getting
excited. It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial
evidence against a man, here it was against Rand-Brown. Take the two
cases. Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton's study was wrecked "with
the compliments of the League". Trevor had turned him out of the first
fifteen. Trevor's study was wrecked "with the compliments of the
League". As Clowes had pointed out, the man with the most obvious
motive for not wishing Barry to play for the school was Rand-Brown. It
seemed a true bill.
"I shouldn't wonder if you're right," he said, "but of course one can't
do anything yet. You want a lot more evidence. Anyhow, we must play him
against Ripton, I suppose. Which is his study? I'll go and tell him
now."
"Ten."
Trevor knocked at the door of study Ten. Rand-Brown was sitting over
the fire, reading. He jumped up when he saw that it was Trevor who had
come in, and to his visitor it seemed that his face wore a guilty look.
"What do you want?" said Rand-Brown.
It was not the politest way of welcoming a visitor. It increased
Trevor's suspicions. The man was afraid. A great idea darted into his
mind. Why not go straight to the point and have it out with him here
and now? He had the League's letter about the bat in his pocket. He
would confront him with it and insist on searching the study there and
then. If Rand-Brown were really, as he suspected, the writer of the
letter, the bat must be in this room somewhere. Search it now, and he
would have no time to hide it. He pulled out the letter.
"I believe you wrote that," he said.
Trevor was always direct.
Rand-Brown seemed to turn a little pale, but his voice when he replied
was quite steady.
"That's a lie," he said.
"Then, perhaps," said Trevor, "you wouldn't object to proving it."
"How?"
"By letting me search your study?"
"You don't believe my word?"
"Why should I? You don't believe mine."
Rand-Brown made no comment on this remark.
"Was that what you came here for?" he asked.
"No," said Trevor; "as a matter of fact, I came to tell you to turn out
for running and passing with the first tomorrow afternoon. You're
playing against Ripton on Saturday."
Rand-Brown's attitude underwent a complete transformation at the news.
He became friendliness itself.
"All right," he said. "I say, I'm sorry I said what I did about lying.
I was rather sick that you should think I wrote that rot you showed me.
I hope you don't mind."
"Not a bit. Do you mind my searching your study?"
For a moment Rand-Brown looked vicious. Then he sat down with a laugh.
"Go on," he said; "I see you don't believe me. Here are the keys if you
want them."
Trevor thanked him, and took the keys. He opened every drawer and
examined the writing-desk. The bat was in none of these places. He
looked in the cupboards. No bat there.
"Like to take up the carpet?" inquired Rand-Brown.
"No, thanks."
"Search me if you like. Shall I turn out my pockets?"
"Yes, please," said Trevor, to his surprise. He had not expected to be
taken literally.
Rand-Brown emptied them, but the bat was not there. Trevor turned to
go.
"You've not looked inside the legs of the chairs yet," said Rand-Brown.
"They may be hollow. There's no knowing."
"It doesn't matter, thanks," said Trevor. "Sorry for troubling you.
Don't forget tomorrow afternoon."
And he went, with the very unpleasant feeling that he had been badly
scored off.
XVI
THE RIPTON MATCH
It was a curious thing in connection with the matches between Ripton
and Wrykyn, that Ripton always seemed to be the bigger team. They
always had a gigantic pack of forwards, who looked capable of shoving a
hole through one of the pyramids. Possibly they looked bigger to the
Wrykinians than they really were. Strangers always look big on the
football field. When you have grown accustomed to a person's
appearance, he does not look nearly so large. Milton, for instance,
never struck anybody at Wrykyn as being particularly big for a school
forward, and yet today he was the heaviest man on the field by a
quarter of a stone. But, taken in the mass, the Ripton pack were far
heavier than their rivals. There was a legend current among the lower
forms at Wrykyn that fellows were allowed to stop on at Ripton till
they were twenty-five, simply to play football. This is scarcely likely
to have been based on fact. Few lower form legends are.
Jevons, the Ripton captain, through having played opposite Trevor for
three seasons--he was the Ripton left centre-three-quarter--had come to
be quite an intimate of his. Trevor had gone down with Milton and
Allardyce to meet the team at the station, and conduct them up to the
school.
"How have you been getting on since Christmas?" asked Jevons.
"Pretty well. We've lost Paget, I suppose you know?"
"That was the fast man on the wing, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Well, we've lost a man, too."
"Oh, yes, that red-haired forward. I remember him."
"It ought to make us pretty even. What's the ground like?"
"Bit greasy, I should think. We had some rain late last night."
The ground _was_ a bit greasy. So was the ball. When Milton kicked
off up the hill with what wind there was in his favour, the outsides of
both teams found it difficult to hold the ball. Jevons caught it on his
twenty-five line, and promptly handed it forward. The first scrum was
formed in the heart of the enemy's country.
A deep, swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school's
advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely
ceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous but
impressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. It
was worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change to
an excited _crescendo_ as a school three-quarter got off, or the
school back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence.
Sometimes the shouting would give place to clapping when the school was
being pressed and somebody had found touch with a long kick. But mostly
the man on the ropes roared steadily and without cessation, and with
the full force of his lungs, the word "_Wrykyn!_"
The scrum was a long one. For two minutes the forwards heaved and
strained, now one side, now the other, gaining a few inches. The Wrykyn
pack were doing all they knew to heel, but their opponents' superior
weight was telling. Ripton had got the ball, and were keeping it. Their
game was to break through with it and rush. Then suddenly one of their
forwards kicked it on, and just at that moment the opposition of the
Wrykyn pack gave way, and the scrum broke up. The ball came out on the
Wrykyn side, and Allardyce whipped it out to Deacon, who was playing
half with him.
"Ball's out," cried the Ripton half who was taking the scrum. "Break
up. It's out."
And his colleague on the left darted across to stop Trevor, who had
taken Deacon's pass, and was running through on the right.
Trevor ran splendidly. He was a three-quarter who took a lot of
stopping when he once got away. Jevons and the Ripton half met him
almost simultaneously, and each slackened his pace for the fraction of
a second, to allow the other to tackle. As they hesitated, Trevor
passed them. He had long ago learned that to go hard when you have once
started is the thing that pays.
He could see that Rand-Brown was racing up for the pass, and, as he
reached the back, he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the back
got to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from the
corner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wing
three-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the pass
in the old familiar way, and lost a certain try.
The touch-judge ran up with his flag waving in the air, but the referee
had other views.
"Knocked on inside," he said; "scrum here."
"Here" was, Trevor saw with unspeakable disgust, some three yards from
the goal-line. Rand-Brown had only had to take the pass, and he must
have scored.
The Ripton forwards were beginning to find their feet better now, and
they carried the scrum. A truculent-looking warrior in one of those
ear-guards which are tied on by strings underneath the chin, and which
add fifty per cent to the ferocity of a forward's appearance, broke
away with the ball at his feet, and swept down the field with the rest
of the pack at his heels. Trevor arrived too late to pull up the rush,
which had gone straight down the right touch-line, and it was not till
Strachan fell on the ball on the Wrykyn twenty-five line that the
danger ceased to threaten.
Even now the school were in a bad way. The enemy were pressing keenly,
and a real piece of combination among their three-quarters would only
too probably end in a try. Fortunately for them, Allardyce and Deacon
were a better pair of halves than the couple they were marking. Also,
the Ripton forwards heeled slowly, and Allardyce had generally got his
man safely buried in the mud before he could pass.
He was just getting round for the tenth time to bottle his opponent as
before, when he slipped. When the ball came out he was on all fours,
and the Ripton exponent, finding to his great satisfaction that he
had not been tackled, whipped the ball out on the left, where a wing
three-quarter hovered.
This was the man Rand-Brown was supposed to be marking, and once again
did Barry's substitute prove of what stuff his tackling powers were
made. After his customary moment of hesitation, he had at the
Riptonian's neck. The Riptonian handed him off in a manner that
recalled the palmy days of the old Prize Ring--handing off was always
slightly vigorous in the Ripton _v._ Wrykyn match--and dashed over
the line in the extreme corner.
There was anguish on the two touch-lines. Trevor looked savage, but
made no comment. The team lined up in silence.
It takes a very good kick to convert a try from the touch-line. Jevons'
kick was a long one, but it fell short. Ripton led by a try to nothing.
A few more scrums near the halfway line, and a fine attempt at a
dropped goal by the Ripton back, and it was half-time, with the score
unaltered.
During the interval there were lemons. An excellent thing is your lemon
at half-time. It cools the mouth, quenches the thirst, stimulates the
desire to be at them again, and improves the play.
Possibly the Wrykyn team had been happier in their choice of lemons on
this occasion, for no sooner had the game been restarted than Clowes
ran the whole length of the field, dodged through the three-quarters,
punted over the back's head, and scored a really brilliant try, of the
sort that Paget had been fond of scoring in the previous term. The man
on the touch-line brightened up wonderfully, and began to try and
calculate the probable score by the end of the game, on the assumption
that, as a try had been scored in the first two minutes, ten would be
scored in the first twenty, and so on.
But the calculations were based on false premises. After Strachan had
failed to convert, and the game had been resumed with the score at one
try all, play settled down in the centre, and neither side could pierce
the other's defence. Once Jevons got off for Ripton, but Trevor brought
him down safely, and once Rand-Brown let his man through, as before,
but Strachan was there to meet him, and the effort came to nothing. For
Wrykyn, no one did much except tackle. The forwards were beaten by the
heavier pack, and seldom let the ball out. Allardyce intercepted a pass
when about ten minutes of play remained, and ran through to the back.
But the back, who was a capable man and in his third season in the
team, laid him low scientifically before he could reach the line.
Altogether it looked as if the match were going to end in a draw. The
Wrykyn defence, with the exception of Rand-Brown, was too good to be
penetrated, while the Ripton forwards, by always getting the ball in
the scrums, kept them from attacking. It was about five minutes from
the end of the game when the Ripton right centre-three-quarter, in
trying to punt across to the wing, miskicked and sent the ball straight
into the hands of Trevor's colleague in the centre. Before his man
could get round to him he had slipped through, with Trevor backing him
up. The back, as a good back should, seeing two men coming at him, went
for the man with the ball. But by the time he had brought him down, the
ball was no longer where it had originally been. Trevor had got it, and
was running in between the posts.
This time Strachan put on the extra two points without difficulty.
Ripton played their hardest for the remaining minutes, but without
result. The game ended with Wrykyn a goal ahead--a goal and a try to a
try. For the second time in one season the Ripton match had ended in a
victory--a thing it was very rarely in the habit of doing.
* * * * *
The senior day-room at Seymour's rejoiced considerably that night. The
air was dark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally, when
the usual humorist turned the gas out. Milton was out, for he had gone
to the dinner which followed the Ripton match, and the man in command
of the house in his absence was Mill. And the senior day-room had no
respect whatever for Mill.
Barry joined in the revels as well as his ankle would let him, but he
was not feeling happy. The disappointment of being out of the first
still weighed on him.
At about eight, when things were beginning to grow really lively, and
the noise seemed likely to crack the window at any moment, the door was
flung open and Milton stalked in.
"What's all this row?" he inquired. "Stop it at once."
As a matter of fact, the row _had_ stopped--directly he came in.
"Is Barry here?" he asked.
"Yes," said that youth.
"Congratulate you on your first, Barry. We've just had a meeting and
given you your colours. Trevor told me to tell you."
XVII
THE WATCHERS IN THE VAULT
For the next three seconds you could have heard a cannonball drop. And
that was equivalent, in the senior day-room at Seymour's, to a dead
silence. Barry stood in the middle of the room leaning on the stick on
which he supported life, now that his ankle had been injured, and
turned red and white in regular rotation, as the magnificence of the
news came home to him.
Then the small voice of Linton was heard.
"That'll be six d. I'll trouble you for, young Sammy," said Linton. For
he had betted an even sixpence with Master Samuel Menzies that Barry
would get his first fifteen cap this term, and Barry had got it.
A great shout went up from every corner of the room. Barry was one of
the most popular members of the house, and every one had been sorry for
him when his sprained ankle had apparently put him out of the running
for the last cap.
"Good old Barry," said Drummond, delightedly. Barry thanked him in a
dazed way.
Every one crowded in to shake his hand. Barry thanked then all in a
dazed way.
And then the senior day-room, in spite of the fact that Milton had
returned, gave itself up to celebrating the occasion with one of the
most deafening uproars that had ever been heard even in that factory of
noise. A babel of voices discussed the match of the afternoon, each
trying to outshout the other. In one corner Linton was beating wildly
on a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy in
the opposite corner executing an intricate step-dance on somebody
else's box. M'Todd had got hold of the red-hot poker, and was burning
his initials in huge letters on the seat of a chair. Every one, in
short, was enjoying himself, and it was not until an advanced hour that
comparative quiet was restored. It was a great evening for Barry, the
best he had ever experienced.
Clowes did not learn the news till he saw it on the notice-board, on
the following Monday. When he saw it he whistled softly.
"I see you've given Barry his first," he said to Trevor, when they met.
"Rather sensational."
"Milton and Allardyce both thought he deserved it. If he'd been playing
instead of Rand-Brown, they wouldn't have scored at all probably, and
we should have got one more try."
"That's all right," said Clowes. "He deserves it right enough, and I'm
jolly glad you've given it him. But things will begin to move now,
don't you think? The League ought to have a word to say about the
business. It'll be a facer for them."
"Do you remember," asked Trevor, "saying that you thought it must be
Rand-Brown who wrote those letters?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, Milton had an idea that it was Rand-Brown who ragged his study."
"What made him think that?"
Trevor related the Shoeblossom incident.
Clowes became quite excited.
"Then Rand-Brown must be the man," he said. "Why don't you go and
tackle him? Probably he's got the bat in his study."
"It's not in his study," said Trevor, "because I looked everywhere for
it, and got him to turn out his pockets, too. And yet I'll swear he
knows something about it. One thing struck me as a bit suspicious. I
went straight into his study and showed him that last letter--about the
bat, you know, and accused him of writing it. Now, if he hadn't been in
the business somehow, he wouldn't have understood what was meant by
their saying 'the bat you lost'. It might have been an ordinary
cricket-bat for all he knew. But he offered to let me search the study.
It didn't strike me as rum till afterwards. Then it seemed fishy. What
do you think?"
Clowes thought so too, but admitted that he did not see of what use the
suspicion was going to be. Whether Rand-Brown knew anything about the
affair or not, it was quite certain that the bat was not with him.
O'Hara, meanwhile, had decided that the time had come for him to resume
his detective duties. Moriarty agreed with him, and they resolved that
that night they would patronise the vault instead of the gymnasium, and
take a holiday as far as their boxing was concerned. There was plenty
of time before the Aldershot competition.
Lock-up was still at six, so at a quarter to that hour they slipped
down into the vault, and took up their position.
A quarter of an hour passed. The lock-up bell sounded faintly. Moriarty
began to grow tired.
"Is it worth it?" he said, "an' wouldn't they have come before, if they
meant to come?"
"We'll give them another quarter of an hour," said O'Hara. "After that--"
"Sh!" whispered Moriarty.
The door had opened. They could see a figure dimly outlined in the
semi-darkness. Footsteps passed down into the vault, and there came a
sound as if the unknown had cannoned into a chair, followed by a sharp
intake of breath, expressive of pain. A scraping sound, and a flash of
light, and part of the vault was lit by a candle. O'Hara caught a
glimpse of the unknown's face as he rose from lighting the candle, but
it was not enough to enable him to recognise him. The candle was
standing on a chair, and the light it gave was too feeble to reach the
face of any one not on a level with it.
The unknown began to drag chairs out into the neighbourhood of the
light. O'Hara counted six.
The sixth chair had scarcely been placed in position when the door
opened again. Six other figures appeared in the opening one after the
other, and bolted into the vault like rabbits into a burrow. The last
of them closed the door after them.
O'Hara nudged Moriarty, and Moriarty nudged O'Hara; but neither made a
sound. They were not likely to be seen--the blackness of the vault was
too Egyptian for that--but they were so near to the chairs that the
least whisper must have been heard. Not a word had proceeded from the
occupants of the chairs so far. If O'Hara's suspicion was correct, and
this was really the League holding a meeting, their methods were more
secret than those of any other secret society in existence. Even the
Nihilists probably exchanged a few remarks from time to time, when they
met together to plot. But these men of mystery never opened their lips.
It puzzled O'Hara.
The light of the candle was obscured for a moment, and a sound of
puffing came from the darkness.
O'Hara nudged Moriarty again.
"Smoking!" said the nudge.
Moriarty nudged O'Hara.
"Smoking it is!" was the meaning of the movement.
A strong smell of tobacco showed that the diagnosis had been a true
one. Each of the figures in turn lit his pipe at the candle, and sat
back, still in silence. It could not have been very pleasant, smoking
in almost pitch darkness, but it was breaking rules, which was probably
the main consideration that swayed the smokers. They puffed away
steadily, till the two Irishmen were wrapped about in invisible clouds.
Then a strange thing happened. I know that I am infringing copyright in
making that statement, but it so exactly suits the occurrence, that
perhaps Mr Rider Haggard will not object. It _was_ a strange thing
that happened.
A rasping voice shattered the silence.
"You boys down there," said the voice, "come here immediately. Come
here, I say."
It was the well-known voice of Mr Robert Dexter, O'Hara and Moriarty's
beloved house-master.
The two Irishmen simultaneously clutched one another, each afraid that
the other would think--from force of long habit--that the house-master
was speaking to him. Both stood where they were. It was the men of
mystery and tobacco that Dexter was after, they thought.
But they were wrong. What had brought Dexter to the vault was the fact
that he had seen two boys, who looked uncommonly like O'Hara and
Moriarty, go down the steps of the vault at a quarter to six. He had
been doing his usual after-lock-up prowl on the junior gravel, to
intercept stragglers, and he had been a witness--from a distance of
fifty yards, in a very bad light--of the descent into the vault. He had
remained on the gravel ever since, in the hope of catching them as they
came up; but as they had not come up, he had determined to make the
first move himself. He had not seen the six unknowns go down, for, the
evening being chilly, he had paced up and down, and they had by a lucky
accident chosen a moment when his back was turned.
"Come up immediately," he repeated.
Here a blast of tobacco-smoke rushed at him from the darkness. The
candle had been extinguished at the first alarm, and he had not
realised--though he had suspected it--that smoking had been going on.
A hurried whispering was in progress among the unknowns. Apparently
they saw that the game was up, for they picked their way towards the
door.